Adrian broke in impatiently. “Can we do this?”
Hunter gestured with his sword. “After you, big brother.”
Adrian’s silver armband morphed into Ferrin, who slithered down his outstretched arm to wrap himself around Adrian’s wrist. Samantha eyed the snake in trepidation but she squared her shoulders and dipped the tip of the spear through the ripple.
“Find Kalen,” Hunter said, as though the spear could understand him.
Mukasa, standing at the base of the porch steps, smelled a sharp tang of magic. The air shimmered like a heat wave on the Serengeti, but when it cleared, Adrian, Hunter, and Samantha were gone.
Mukasa stared at the spot where they’d vanished for a long, agonizing while, then he lay down with a little moan and rested his great head on his paws.
Chapter Twenty
When Leda opened her eyes again, the sun was high and Hunter was gone. Leda rolled over onto her back, trying and failing to stave off her tears.
After a while, she rose and showered, then went downstairs to find Amber in the kitchen making tea, her eyes as red as Leda’s.
“Our own fault,” Leda said shakily, when Amber pulled her into a hug. “For falling in love with Immortals.”
“Yeah,” Amber said. “I get that.”
Sabina the werewolf was reading the newspaper at the table, Mac next to her playing something in his earbuds at an amazing level, Pearl at the stove. Valerian hadn’t returned from his night patrolling the city.
Sabina watched in sympathy as Leda left Amber, poured herself coffee, and carried it to the kitchen table. “Don’t be too hard on yourselves,” Sabina said. “They’re gorgeous and magical. You didn’t stand a chance.”
Leda slid into a chair across from her. “Doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Amber joined them. “Do you know if Samantha got here all right?” she asked Leda.
“Samantha?” Leda jerked in surprise, and quickly set down her coffee mug. “Why should she be here? She’s still in Los Angeles, looking for her mother.”
Amber shook her head. “I heard Hunter on the phone to her last night, while you were still asleep, asking her to come. When I asked him why, he just gave me one of his smiles and wouldn’t tell me. I assumed he’d told you.”
Leda sighed and turned her mug in her hands. She wondered if she’d ever be able to drink coffee without remembering Hunter’s sensual delight in it. “Sounds like Hunter. And no, he didn’t mention this to me. He sleep spelled me yesterday morning, and I’m just now coming out of it.”
Mac had cut off his music to listen with interest. “Samantha’s the one you talk about who’s paranormal police, right? Mebbe Hunter wants her to arrest the demon.” He grinned at his own joke, then lost his smile. “Or mebbe use her as bait.”
Leda raised her brows. “Bait? How do you mean?
“She’s half demon, right? Tain might be attracted to her death magic and forget about his obsession with the other demon.”
Leda thought about it, wondering what demigod thoughts spun had behind Hunter’s innocuous smile. “I don’t think it will be that simple.”
Mac shrugged and stuffed an earbud back into his ear. “Just an idea.”
Leda felt her treacherous tears returning as her thoughts went to Hunter’s last searing kiss and his conviction that he might never make it back. She had no way of knowing whether Hunter had fulfilled her request to make his seed viable and give her a child. Only time would tell.
Sabina gave her a sympathetic look, and started to speak, then broke off when Leda gasped.
A wave of magic swamped the house, rattling the foundations like an earthquake, and jolting through Leda’s head with migraine intensity. Amber put her hand to her forehead, and Mac sucked in his breath.
“What the hell was that?” Leda asked.
“Outside,” Mac said.
He pushed away from the table and dashed down the hall to the front door, flinging it open before anyone could stop him, Leda right behind him. At the bottom of the porch steps, right at the edge of the magic shield over the house, lay a young woman. She had long black hair, a slim body, and a tattoo on her shoulder bared by a tank top.
Mac gave a cry of surprised anguish and dropped to his knees next to her. “Christine!”
Leda reached them as the young woman fluttered open her eyes. “Mac?”
Leda crouched beside them. “Are you Christine Lachlan?”
“That’s me.” Christine’s eyes focused on Mac, then she looked around wildly. “Where’s Kalen?”
Mac’s face went somber. “Gone, love. Taken by the enemy.”
Christine looked stricken. “Culsu trapped him finally, did he? I need to talk to Adrian.”
Mac and Leda exchanged a glance, then they both looked up at Amber and Sabina who’d reached them.
“What?” Christine asked. “Kalen’s here, isn’t he? He’d better be or we’re all in trouble.”
Leda put her hand under the young woman’s arm. “Come on. We need to go in the house where it’s safer. Then you need to tell us exactly what happened.”
Adrian and Hunter did not end up where Hunter assumed they would. He thought they’d find themselves in the same grove behind Amber’s house, but an unreal one. Instead they were back in the stupid movie-set dungeon. Not only that, the ripple had sucked in Samantha as well.
“What am I doing here?” she demanded. “I thought I got to have breakfast.”
Neither Immortal could answer her. The slime-covered walls looked even more fake than before, the manacles and cage whole again, as though Hunter had never destroyed them. The edges of the room were in deep shadow, and no matter how far the three walked as they looked around, they never reached those shadows, as though the walls receded as they moved toward them.
“Screw this,” Hunter said after ten minutes of nothing.
“Wait a minute,” Adrian said behind him. “Look at the spear.”
The crystal tip was alive with white magic. Ferrin the snake sat up on Adrian’s arm and hissed.
Adrian grabbed the spear from Samantha and held it in front of him. He glared at it, as though waiting for it to do something, and then his arm jerked. “This way,” Adrian said.
He walked off to the left and Hunter and Samantha followed. As before, the room moved so they never reached the shadows in the corners, but after a time, they came upon a man standing in a circle of light.
Hunter hadn’t seen his brother Kalen in seven hundred years. Kalen hadn’t changed much, it looked like, his hair still dark, eyes charcoal gray, only now he was naked, the tattoo on his thigh stark in the eerie light. He stood stiffly upright, hands behind him, his head thrown back, his face turned up to the light. Of the witch Christine, there was no sign.
“Kalen,” Hunter called softly. He touched Kalen’s shoulder, but though the big man rocked under Hunter’s hand, he didn’t snap out of whatever spell held him.
Adrian brought the spear around and touched Kalen with the tip of it. The magic in the crystal flared white then suddenly died into a dull, gray-yellow glow. Kalen never moved.
“That can’t be good,” Hunter said, eyeing the spear.
A trickle of sweat rolled down Hunter’s back as he remembered the pain the demon had inflicted on him, and even more vividly, his fall into the narrow chasm in the street. Hunter’s plan had been to find Kalen in this unreality and try to drag him to Ravenscroft, where the three of them could regroup and then look for Tain and Darius. Even better if they found Tain in here and pulled him along to Ravenscroft with them.
“Let’s grab him and go,” Hunter said.
“What about Samantha?” Adrian asked.
Samantha folded her slim arms, her eyes defiant but liquid with fear. “Yes, what about Samantha? Are you going to leave me in here?”
Half demon or no, the young woman was terrified. Hunter laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “No. We’ll find some way to send you back to Amber’s.”
She didn
’t look reassured, but said nothing more.
Adrian grasped one of Kalen’s arms, and Hunter took the other. Before they could move him, Ferrin slipped from Adrian’s wrist and fell to the floor with a sickening plop.
“Shit.” Adrian let go of Kalen and crouched to scoop up Ferrin’s limp body.
“Is he dead?” Hunter asked.
“No. But out of it.”
Hunter had a thought. He unsheathed his sword and held it up, willing it to burst into flame. Nothing happened. “I don’t know about you all, but this worries me.”
Adrian cradled Ferrin in his hands. “I can’t open a portal to Ravenscroft without my weapon. Kalen might be able to, but he’s down for the count.”
“How about we go back to the grove then?” Hunter asked. “If we can.”
“No,” Adrian said.
Samantha’s eyes widened. “What? Why not?”
Adrian rapped Kalen’s spear once on the floor. “I want to get Kehksut. If we’ve walked into his little cage, fine. I couldn’t go after him after Amber freed me from her tower room, because I needed to stay and help her. I couldn’t do it at the Calling for the same reason.” Adrian’s dark eyes burned with fanatic fire. “I’m not letting this chance go.”
Samantha looked at Hunter in fear. “He’s crazy,” she said. “I thought you were crazy, but I can tell he is even more than you.”
Adrian’s dark eyes swam with sparks. He turned an angry glance on Samantha, and she shrank back into Hunter.
“Three Immortals against this demon are better odds than two,” Hunter said to Adrian. “We take Kalen and Samantha back to Amber’s, wake Kalen up, and then go hunting.”
“Oh, now,” came Kehksut’s female voice. “Don’t go. That would be a shame.”
The demon in her female form walked toward them, this time wearing a red form-hugging dress and impossibly high heels, the shoes also red. Adrian gripped the spear, ready to fight, as the demon stopped before Hunter and Samantha.
“Did you bring me a present?” She reached out and drew one scarlet fingernail down Samantha’s cheek. “A half demon. Even less than a lesser demon—meat and drink to me.”
Samantha’s head came up even as she cringed closer to Hunter, who extended his magic protection over her. “If you were in my jurisdiction,” Samantha said clearly, “I’d have you in spelled cuffs hoping you had a good lawyer before you knew what hit you.”
The demon ignored Samantha and gave Hunter a smile. “She has a mouth on her. Your pet, is she?”
Hunter put his hand on Samantha’s shoulder. “Don’t you get tired of those stupid dominatrix outfits?” he asked the demon.
“You don’t like me like this?” Kehksut purred. “Maybe you want to remember me a different way.”
The red dress fell away, the she-creature morphing into a tall, muscular male. His clothes became the leather armor worn by the people on the plains of what was now Hungary.
Hunter realized as he stared in surprise that he’d seen this particular demon before, ages ago. Only then the demon had held a bloody sword in his hand, right after said demon had driven the blade through Hunter’s wife.
The red rage that welled up inside Hunter terrified him at the same time it exhilarated him. So this was the demon—the same Old One who had destroyed Hunter’s wife and children and made Hunter’s life a living hell. The same demon who had laughed when Hunter had launched into berserker rage and wiped out every single one of the lesser demons that had attacked the camp. But the Old One had gone, vanishing before Hunter could kill him.
The demon laughed now. Hunter lunged at him, his sword coming down in an arc to swipe the demon’s head from its body. Hunter heard Adrian shouting words from ancient Egypt, a war cry that would have terrified any mortal to death. Hunter’s sword and Kalen’s spear contacted the demon at the same time, and in that instant, everything stopped.
Tain walked out of the shadows in his chain mail and surcoat, surveying the three warriors in the middle of the room. They stood back to back in a pool of white light, blank faces turned upward. Ferrin the snake was stretched out in front of Adrian, Hunter’s serpentine sword lying at his feet, Kalen’s spear on the floor in front of him.
Three Immortals. Three brothers. Almost complete.
Tain sensed something incongruous behind him and turned around. A young woman hovered in the shadows, out of place here, and terrified. Her aura was unusual, a human’s but tainted with death magic that warred with a little bit of life magic. A half demon.
“Who is this?” Tain asked curiously.
“A treat,” Kehksut-Culsu-Amadja answered. “Your brothers brought her for us.”
Tain reached toward the woman, who watched him with wide dark eyes, but he didn’t touch her. “An innocent.”
Kehksut snorted. “No human is completely innocent. This one has demon in her. I’ll save her for a snack.”
Tain looked the young woman up and down, but the presence of his brothers, so close to him now after such a long time apart distracted him. He turned away from her. “You sent the witch Christine back to the others?” he asked Kehksut.
“I did as you wished.”
Tain walked a slow circle around the three Immortals, a lock of his red hair tickling the tattoo on his cheek. Kalen and Adrian were dark-haired like demons, Hunter’s hair lighter. Hunter’s father had been a European barbarian from what was now the Baltic countries, captured in some war by a powerful prince in the Indian subcontinent, and made a slave. An odd choice for Kali, but Hunter had been fond of him.
“It’s like my brothers to strike first and think later,” Tain said.
“So it seems,” Kehksut agreed.
“Three down, one to go.” Tain walked around his brothers again, feeling a pang of regret and longing. “And then it will be over. I am so very tired of all this.”
“I know, love.” The demon morphed back into her beautiful woman form and touched Tain’s cheek, the one without the tattoo. “Shall we celebrate?”
Tain frowned at her. Demons. They thought about sex and little else.
“Not right now,” Tain said in a stern voice. “I want to think a little. Alone.”
The demon opened her mouth to argue, then nodded. “As you wish, love. You know you have but to call me.”
She touched her fingers to Tain’s lips, then turned around and sauntered away, letting her hips sway.
Later. Tain would sate himself again on her body, but right now he wanted to observe his brothers standing here so quietly, so peacefully, and remember . . .
He sensed the dark human woman lower herself to the floor and wrap her arms around her knees, shivering. She was interesting, and so little had interested Tain lately. But later. He’d deal with her later. For now . . . He looked back at his brothers, and planned.
Christine related her story from the moment she’d scryed for Kalen in Rome to the moment they’d been pulled out of the plane between New York and Seattle.
“I don’t remember much after that.” Wrapped in a blanket, her dark hair straggling about her face, Christine cradled a mug of coffee as though it were a healing elixir. “I remember seeing Tain and Culsu. Then Kalen was trying to hang on to me, and something was dragging me from him. I screamed that it was tearing me apart, and Kalen let go. I landed here.”
“Did you know where you were?” Amber asked. “When you were yanked from the plane, I mean.”
Christine shook her head. “I have no idea. Everything was a blur. I only saw faces.”
Leda exchanged a glance with Amber, her fear echoed in Amber’s eyes. “Hunter and Adrian have gone after Kalen,” Leda said.
Christine shot them a worried look. “What about Darius? That’s the name of the other Immortal, right?”
“We haven’t heard from him in a while,” Amber said, shaking her head.
“We could try the Calling spell again,” Leda said. “If it has the power to Call the Immortals, it might yank them out of wherever they are.”
Amber didn’t look hopeful. “The first attempt was easily thwarted by the demon. And look what happened—we had to scour the world to find all the brothers. We don’t have time to do that again.”
Mac’s earbuds dangled from his shoulders, still making a tinny sound of music. “I seriously don’t like the idea of an Immortal-less world. But that’s what we’ve got right now.”
“You know,” Leda said, “before this, I never knew they existed. I never realized we even needed them. Now it scares me very much to not have them around.” Plus she missed Hunter like crazy. Waking up to the empty bed, knowing he was gone, had taken the heart out of her.
“So what do we do?” Sabina demanded. “Sit around and wonder? You’re three magic-ass witches—do spells or something.” She vaguely waved her hands then lowered them as they stared at her. “Sorry. It’s the wolf in me, I guess.”
“She’s right,” Christine said. “We need to strike.”
“Hunter left me here with the understanding that I’d sit tight with Amber, and we’d wait for him and Adrian to solve the problems.” Leda grinned. “They don’t know us very well, do they?”
Mac gave a short laugh. “You’re right there, love. They have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into, falling for you lot. I’m enjoying this.”
“Good,” Leda said. “So, do you have any big ideas Mr. half-god Sidhe?”
“Magic,” Mac said promptly. “The three of you have magic which, put together, could be mighty powerful. This will be solved by us pooling talents, not by going off in different directions. Me, I’m getting a cool new song out of it.” He picked up his black Ovation guitar and started moving his fingers up and down the neck in swift and complex patterns.
The three witches looked at each other. “You heard him,” Amber said quietly. “Let’s go save the Immortals.”
Amber, Leda, and Christine spent every hour of the next several days looking up spells and inventing new ones, trying to puzzle out how to open the ripples in reality, using scrying, cards, runes, and other spells to try to figure out what to do. As when Leda had tried the location spell to find Samantha’s mother, the minute any magic touched the ripples, the backlash was terrible and painful.
The Gathering Page 22
